1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

.PREFACE

I CLAIM no merit for the following pages, other than may attach to industry, application, the gift of copying accurately, and the acquisition of writer's cramp. The mechanical writing is— to the great joy of the compositors who have dealt with it—every letter mine own ; but the best part of the book has been conveyed from other sources. In fact the book is, as the old lady said of the divine tragedy of Hamlet^ " full of quotations." The hand is the hand of Gub- bins, but the voice is, for the most part, the voice of the great ones of the past, including Pliny and Gervase Markham. The matter, or most of it—I am endeavouring to drive the fact home—is culled from other sources 5 and if this is the most useful and interesting work ever published it is more my fortune than my fault. The genial reception of my earlier effort. Cakes and Ale—which was condemned only by worshippers of Ala^ who were not expected to applaud—together with the hope of earning

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